Cold War and Space Race Context
The fair was originally conceived in 1955 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, but it soon became clear that that date was too ambitious. With the Space Race underway and Boeing having "put Seattle on the map" as "an aerospace city", a major theme of the fair was to show that "the United States was not really 'behind' the Soviet Union in the realms of science and space." As a result, the themes of space, science, and the future completely trumped the earlier conception of a "Festival of the West."
In June 1960, the International Bureau of Expositions certified Century 21 as a World's Fair. Project manager Ewen Dingwall went to Moscow to request Soviet participation, but was turned down. The Baltic states (then part of the Soviet Union) were not invited, nor was the People's Republic of China, North Vietnam, or North Korea.
As it happened, the Cold War had an additional effect on the fair. President John F. Kennedy was supposed to attend the closing ceremony of the fair on October 21, 1962. He bowed out, pleading a "heavy cold"; it later became public that he was dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The fair's vision of the future displayed a technologically based optimism that did not anticipate any dramatic social change, one rooted in the 1950s rather than in the cultural tides that would emerge in the 1960s. Affluence, automation, consumerism, and American power would grow; social equity would simply take care of itself on a rising tide of abundance; women would still be confined largely to the domestic realm; the human race would master nature through technology rather than view it in terms of ecology. In contrast, 12 years later—even in far more conservative Spokane, Washington—Expo '74 took environmentalism as its central theme.
Read more about this topic: Century 21 Exposition
Famous quotes containing the words cold, war, space, race and/or context:
“I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal relations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love’s world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Another danger is imminent: A contested result. And we have no such means for its decision as ought to be provided by law. This must be attended to hereafter.... If a contest comes now it may lead to a conflict of arms. I can only try to do my duty to my countrymen in that case. I shall let no personal ambition turn me from the path of duty. Bloodshed and civil war must be averted if possible. If forced to fight, I have no fears from lack of courage or firmness.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.”
—Philip Freneau (1752–1832)
“The great want of our race is perfect educators to train new-born minds, who are infallible teachers of what is right and true.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The dropout can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of—career, ambition, conspicuous consumption. The effects of hippie sanctimony can only be felt in the context of others who plunder his lifestyle for what they find good or profitable, a process known as rip-off by the hippie, who will not see how savagely he has pillaged intricate and demanding civilizations for his own parodic lifestyle.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)